


Tacenda

by 0bviousLeigh



Series: Yuma is a Girl [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Series Rewrite, Yuma is a girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-30
Updated: 2017-08-30
Packaged: 2018-12-21 22:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11953518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0bviousLeigh/pseuds/0bviousLeigh
Summary: Yuma wears her uniform even though she doesn't go to school anymore. (warning for swearing)





	Tacenda

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the first part of a Zexal rewrite that I started for Zexal month on tumblr--an AU in which, first and foremost, Yuma is a girl. Always a girl, born with a V, the whole nine yards. Why? Because the idea wouldn't leave me alone. So [I drew it](http://rainbow-galaxy-supernova.tumblr.com/post/164290621451/zexal-month-day-13-yuma-day-something-ive-been), and I started writing it, and I ran with it.
> 
> This is the first story in the chronology of the series, but it takes place prior to the series' start.

Yuma still wears her uniform when she leaves in the morning, even though she’s not going to school. She also wears a red scarf tied around her left wrist (were she still going to school, she’d probably be expelled for it). She takes off on her skateboard and meets the other girls at the mall, where they loiter with cigarette smoke making clouds over their heads.

“Morning,” Red says with a nod in Yuma’s direction. She drops her cigarette and crushes it under her heel. “Ready to go?”

Yuma nods and unzips her backpack. “I’ve got food,” she says, taking out a container full of rice balls.

The girls eagerly grab for the food, muttering thanks to Yuma as they do so. Yuma doesn’t tell them that her grandma makes the food, there’s no point to it. They don’t care where the food came from, and if grandma knows that Yuma feeds the girl gang, she’s never said anything about it, even though she makes extra food. Maybe grandma feels sorry for these girls just like Yuma does. Maybe she, like Yuma, sees their hollow cheeks and ill-fitting clothes and recognizes that these girls know loss. But Yuma would never tell grandma any of that, just like how she doesn’t comment on Pepper’s split lip or the fact that Kitty has been wearing the same thing for three days in a row.

After leaving the mall, Red leads the group to a second-hand store, where they bust in with loud conversation and Red complains about the clothes being overpriced. The young girl behind the counter looks flustered as they browse the racks. When they’re done shopping Red marches to the register with a pile of clothes in her arms and slides the girl a rare card, asking for a discount. The girl does give them the discount, and the group dashes out of the store before she can realize the card is a fake.

At their hideout/club house/the filthy old shed that Red dueled a rival gang for last week and won, Red tosses the clothes to Kitty and tells her to change because she smells like a dead fish. Kitty calls Red a bitch, but there’s no venom in her words. Kitty changes right there in front of everyone as the older girls light up more cigarettes, and Yuma desperately wants to ask Kitty if the yellowing bruise on her shoulder still hurts, but she refrains.

“Nine!” Red snaps, making Yuma jump.

“What?” She asks.

“I said, I want you and Sunny on patrol today.” Red glowers at her. “And get your head out of the clouds and your eyes off Kitty’s boobs.”

Yuma sticks her tongue out at Red as Kitty hoots and shimmies her shoulders in Yuma’s direction. Yuma grabs her deck (not her deck, her deck is at home in her room, this deck is full of stolen cards that the girls gave her) and she and Sunny exit the shed.

“Which way?” Yuma asks as Sunny takes a drag on her cigarette.

“Tower,” Sunny answers as she exhales smoke. Yuma fans the stuff away from her face and they set off. They walk in silence for so long that Yuma can almost trick herself into thinking she’s walking alone, meandering the way she did in the days immediately following her mom and dad’s disappearance, before she ran into Red and the gang.

“Good on you, by the way,” Sunny says, out of the blue.

“Huh?” Yuma asks.

“Not smoking,” Sunny clarifies. “It’s horrible for one’s health.”

Yuma forgets about the unspoken rule that she’s not supposed to ask questions. “Why do you do it then?”

Sunny shrugs. “Because I don’t care about my health. Because nicotine releases chemicals that make you feel happy. Because it cuts my appetite and I forget I’m hungry.” She gives Yuma a hard look. “Maybe I just thought Red looked cool, so I did it too.”

Yuma nods, unsure if Sunny is scolding her or not. It’s hard to tell with her—the nickname Sunny is an ironic one, the girl almost never smiles and she keeps an even, almost bored tone when she talks. No one goes by their given names in the gang, though some nicknames reference their given names. Yuma’s nickname, Nine, came from the characters for her last name. Red picked the name, as she’s done for all the girls.

Sunny elbows Yuma. “Nine, look,” she says, pointing across the street.

Yuma looks and her heart sinks. There’s a few members of a rival gang, a boy gang, across the street. Normally she wouldn’t care, but she knows one of them.

“Should we duel them?” Sunny asks.

Yuma tries to play it cool. “There’s like, five of them. Red would kill us.”

“She doesn’t have to know,” Sunny says, not like she’s challenging Yuma’s words, merely stating a fact.

But Yuma frowns. “We can find someone weaker, I don’t feel like taking on a huge fight.”

Sunny shrugs. “’Kay, but we gotta heckle them at least a bit.”

Yuma nods, but before she can even get a word out, one of the boys yells across the street at them.

“Look at what Red sent out,” he hollers. “How did her boots taste this morning?”

Sunny inhales deeply and yells back, “Better than Rikuo’s dick tastes, I bet!”

The boy’s face turns positively purple as Sunny and Yuma shriek with laughter. The boys mutter and turns around to leave, and Yuma locks eyes with a ghost from her past—Shark, formerly Ryoga, formerly a friend of Yuma’s. At least, that’s how she thought of her best friend’s twin, though he always complained about hanging out with a couple of girls. It’s surreal to be standing across the street from him, pretending to be strangers even though he attended her parent’s memorial, and she saw him right after Rio’s accident. The distance between them might as well be an ocean instead of a street, even though she knows that he hates green peppers and he knows that she can’t stand tomatoes. Has it really been a year since he and Rio were last at her house? It had been for her eleventh birthday.

Yuma half expects Ryoga to look disappointed in her, or maybe she has a fleeting hope that he’ll wave, or smile, or give some indication that he remembers all those things the same way she does. But his expression remains cold, and he turns away and follows the retreating members of his gang, acting like he didn’t even see Yuma.

Yuma’s blood boils and she gives the finger to Shark’s back. She grits her teeth and turns on her heel. “C’mon,” she growls to Sunny, stalking off in the opposite direction, “Let’s go find some weaklings and make ‘em cry.”

By the end of the day she and Sunny have beaten eight duelists and taken their strongest cards. Red lets her pick a card to keep as a reward, but even as Yuma pockets a card (one she didn’t even look at), the victory feels hollow.


End file.
